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Herbert (Family Guy)
Herbert is an elderly pedophile who likes boys and lives on Spooner Street with his old, crippled dog, Jesse. He has a high-pitched, very soft, effeminate voice and with a slight whistle lisp. He is often seen wearing a light blue robe and slippers and uses a zimmer-frame walker to get around. He becomes fixated on Chris in To Love and Die in Dixie when Chris took up a paper route and developed an unhealthy obsession with him. When the family returned from the South, he left 113 messages asking what had happened to the paper boy. Herbert frequently seems to make inappropriate, sexually-tinged comments to teenage boys. It is revealed later on that he is the eldest member of the Skull and Bones secret society. Origins Originally, he was going to be a creepy driver of a school bus that Chris was afraid to go near. Herbert has a high voice and speaks with a whistle. According to Seth MacFarlane, Herbert was created when Mike Henry would use his voice to scold the writers when they had trouble coming up with new ideas for episodes. He admitted that it made him laugh every time and decided to adapt him as a character. Mike Henry had also said that the inspiration was a senior citizen that used to greet him at the grocery store. Character expansion Herbert first appeared in two episodes of the third season and was originally intended as a small time gag (as a lot of other previous characters before him), but due to high acclaim from fans, featured more regularly and was greatly expanded on in the fourth season. "The Courtship of Stewie's Father," an episode which included a subplot where Chris is told to do chores for Herbert after accidentally breaking his window with a baseball, Herbert's personal life is expanded somewhat. Here, viewers are introduced to Jesse, his dog that looks like Herbert and has similar mobility issues and utterances. However, most of Herbert's past remains unknown (e.g., whether he has a family). However, some light was possibly shed on his personal history when, while Chris and Herbert are at a fancy restaurant, he sings the song "Somewhere That's Green" (from the musical Little Shop of Horrors). Herbert's interpretation of the song can be seen as that of a lonely old man who, aware that he is nearing the end of his life, sees Chris as his one final opportunity for companionship. However, Herbert's true motives - a sympathy seeker or someone who truly is lonely and is seeking companionship - are placed in question with the final tag scene, where he becomes overjoyed when he begins watching a televised youth sporting event. Indeed, because of censorship issues related to this episode—Fox demanded the removal of several gags in which Herbert tries to make his move but Chris unknowingly outwits him—the end product that aired appeared to show Chris' accompanying Herbert to the restaurant as simply an act of kindness. In the fourth season episode Petergeist, Herbert saves Chris when an evil tree in the yard grabs him. After the tree initially attacks, Herbert states, "Hey Skinnybritches, that there is my man, why don't you pick on someone your own size?" Duplicating the scene where Gandalf confronts the Balrog from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring, he then proclaims, "You shall not pass" and slams his walker into the ground, causing the ground under the tree to split sending both the tree and Herbert falling down a long chasm into water, again mimicking the fight between Gandalf and the Balrog at the beginning of the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers film. It appears that he may have died in this episode, although a scene cut for time (and, according to the DVD commentary, Standards and Practices) had Herbert and the tree climb out of the hole after the Griffin house vanishes and Herbert asks the tree whether he was a giving tree or a receiving tree. The scene was later re-added to the DVD version. Herbert also tried unsuccessfully to hit on Stewie while he was doing Chris' paper route, saying "Oh ho, we've got a fighter" after Stewie verbally shot down his effort, exclaiming, while on his tricycle; "Piss off, you perverted old freak". Later appearances Herbert made an appearance in Play It Again, Brian in which Peter and Lois hire him to babysit the Griffin children because he's "watched" several children. While doing so he makes several attempts to seduce Chris, at one point trying to get Chris to bathe him; Meg does it instead, and Herbert exclaims "Rats!". Later he reads Peter and the Wolf to Chris as a bedtime story, changing the moral to suit his own means, and Chris asks Herbert if he's a pedophile... the reaction to this is not seen. During the closing credits he is shown sleeping at the foot of Chris' bed, where the Evil Monkey tries but fails to threaten him. During Season Seven, Herbert appeared in at least two episodes: "Family Gay," where he confused a jockey for a child; and "420," where - during a musical performance - he attempts to snare children in a butterfly net. Category:Family Guy characters Category:Fictional gay men Category:Fictional pedophiles Category:Fictional World War II veterans Category:2001 introductions